Marc & Darnò

Marco Guarino was born in Chieri, near Turin, in 1973, and traces his path into watchmaking to a childhood fascination with astronomy. After training at the watchmaking school in Turin, he founded the Marc & Darnò atelier to pursue what he describes as the relationship between terrestrial time and the workings of the wider universe — and became an AHCI candidate in 2024 on the strength of that work.

Early models built this reputation around the moon: the Lunar Day combines a lunar-day indication with a precise moon-phase display on an open-worked dial, while the Lunar Equation went further, becoming — by the atelier's account — the first watch in the world to indicate the lunar equation, with the lunar-equation mechanism on the dial side and a separate lunar-phase display on the caseback. Both are built on a heavily reworked ETA base calibre (2824-2 for the Lunar Day, 2892-A2 for the Lunar Equation), redesigned and hand-finished in-house while retaining a 38-hour power reserve at 28,800 vph despite the added complexity.

The atelier's most ambitious project to date is the Equation of Time, a 39mm tantalum-cased watch with an aventurine dial and a solar motif in white and yellow gold, built around a newly developed in-house manually wound movement. It combines a meridian equation of time (showing the difference between mean and true solar time), an annual calendar, and a moon-phase display accurate to within one day every 122 years — described by the maker as 'a precise sundial on the wrist.' As with all Marc & Darnò pieces, every watch can be individually customized, with deliveries of the Equation of Time slated to begin in 2027.